Phenotypic Variability in Resting-State Functional Connectivity: Current Status

Abstract

We reviewed the extant literature with the goal of assessing the extent to which resting-state functional connectivity is associated with phenotypic variability in healthy and disordered populations. A large corpus of work has accumulated to date (125 studies), supporting the association between intrinsic functional connectivity and individual differences in a wide range of domains-not only in cognitive, perceptual, motoric, and linguistic performance, but also in behavioral traits (e.g., impulsiveness, risky decision making, personality, and empathy) and states (e.g., anxiety and psychiatric symptoms) that are distinguished by cognitive and affective functioning, and in neurological conditions with cognitive and motor sequelae. Further, intrinsic functional connectivity is sensitive to remote (e.g., early-life stress) and enduring (e.g., duration of symptoms) life experience, and it exhibits plasticity in response to recent experience (e.g., learning and adaptation) and pharmacological treatment. The most pervasive associations were observed with the default network; associations were also widespread between the cingulo-opercular network and both cognitive and affective behaviors, while the frontoparietal network was associated primarily with cognitive functions. Associations of somatomotor, frontotemporal, auditory, and amygdala networks were relatively restricted to the behaviors linked to their respective putative functions. Surprisingly, visual network associations went beyond visual function to include a variety of behavioral traits distinguished by affective function. Together, the reviewed evidence sets the stage for testing causal hypothesis about the functional role of intrinsic connectivity and augments its potential as a biomarker for healthy and disordered brain function.

Susceptibility to everyday cognitive failure is reflected in functional network interactions in the resting brain

“…Connectivity focused analyses of resting-state data have yielded a number of resting-state networks (RSN) which appear to be stable across subjects and time (Damoiseaux et al, 2006). Beyond this overall consistency of topographical features, between-subject variability in spatial network characteristics relating to the involvement of specific brain regions in certain RSN have been linked to various psychiatric disorders, as well as to differences in task performance and behavioural traits (Vaidya & Gordon, 2013). Similarly, variability in the brain's resting activity may be associated with differences in the proneness to cognitive failure.…”

Whole-Brain Calcium Imaging Reveals an Intrinsic Functional Network in Drosophila

“…By correlating spontaneous activity during “resting-states”[1], studies of intrinsic brain networks in humans have demonstrated a correspondence with task-related activation patterns[2], relationships to behavior[3], and alterations in processes such as aging[4] and brain disorders[5], highlighting the importance of resting state measurements for understanding brain function. Here, we develop methods to measure intrinsic functional connectivity in Drosophila , a powerful model for the study of neural computation.…”

Anxious personality and functional efficiency of the insular-opercular network: A graph-analytic approach to resting-state fMRI

“…Furthermore, task fMRI studies point toward aberrant functional interactions between prefrontal control regions and subcortical areas in highly anxious participants (Basten et al, 2011;Bishop, Duncan, Brett, & Lawrence, 2004), and evidence from structural tractography suggests that individual differences in prefrontal-subcortical white matter projections represents a neurostructural correlate of anxiety . Although the insular-opercular network has been most dominantly implicated in anxiety (Vaidya & Gordon, 2013), other resting-state networks such as the frontoparietal control network comprising the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial anterior cingulate, and the intraparietal lobule (Dosenbach et al, 2008) and the default-mode network have also been hypothesized to play a relevant role (Sylvester et al, 2012). Our findings of reduced network efficiency in highly harm-avoidant participants, however, seems to have some specificity for the insular-opercular network: Even though harm avoidance was intercorrelated with the characteristic path lengths of some other networks, these relationships were no longer significant when mean connectivity was taken into account.…”